Zero Budget? By Annie Bergeron and Tom Hocker - 12/01/2008
Video gaming is becoming more and more mainstream every day. It’s definitely an accepted part of library programming, and game clubs are becoming part of school extracurricular activities. If you want to start a program through your school library, it’s likely that your administration will be happy to approve it.
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We’ve Got the Technology: But our today's schools ready for a radical transformation? By Marc Aronson - 12/01/2008
“We are 20th-century teachers using 19th-century methods to reach 21st-century students.” That’s what I heard a bright, committed teacher tell her fellow educators at a recent educational technology conference. That terse, powerful statement reflects what many people, including myself, have often voiced or thought.
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Happy Birthday, Abe: Celebrate Abraham Lincoln's big 2-0-0 with these fun books By Kathleen Baxter - 12/01/2008
On February 12, we celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, and publishers, like the rest of the country, are rushing in to mark the big day of this bigger-than-life-size man. Lincoln probably already commands a goodly portion of your bookshelves, but take a look at some of these wonderful new titles, which make for fine booktalks.
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The Party Poopers: Teens will be teens, and we need to remind everyone on the library staff By Tricia Suellentrop - 12/01/2008
We recently hosted a successful teen author visit at my library. We did our due diligence; informed everyone on staff (even the custodians); and promoted the hell out of it on our Web site and at the library. It paid off. On the night of the visit, teens started lining up three hours before showtime.
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Into the Blogosphere By Jami Schwarzwalder - 11/01/2008
Blogs are often defined as online journals in which writers share information, opinions, and personal experiences. But blogs have a much greater potential than this definition implies. They are tools that can be used to communicate not only with family members and friends, but with millions of people around the world.
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The (Really) Big Six: Early Literacy Skills By Renea Arnold and Nell Colburn - 11/01/2008
Phonological awareness. Print motivation. Remember how strange some of the six early literacy skills sounded when librarians first heard about them? These days, the six skills (which also include vocabulary, print awareness, narrative skill, and letter knowledge) seem to be household words in libraries that serve young children.
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Marc Aronson: No Direction Home By Marc Aronson - 11/01/2008
From where I'm sitting, I see shakings, stirrings, and huge signs of change in the world of children's books. But there's no clear sense of where we're going or how we'll know when we've arrived. Here's what I mean: no sooner does Scholastic launch Rick Riordan's “The 39 Clues”—a 10-book adventure series for young readers, complete with an online game and hundreds of collectab...
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PreS-K–A five-year-old (rabbit) awakes one morning to discover that there will be no school, no daddy flying home today, and no going outside–until the snow stops.
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The staff of Salinas Public Library (CA), aka The John Steinbeck Public Library, pose with Lewis Buzbee, author of Steinbeck's Ghost, a middle-grade novel that centers around the threat of the library's closing in 2004. After a difficult struggle, the library remains open and has just extended its hours to seven days a week.
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